Kate and I had the day off of work today so we went on a little hike to McCullough Gulch. The nice thing is that the trail head is right next door practically. Basically, the gulch is just on the other side of Quandary… so just one valley over from us.

The road to the trail head was still covered in snow, so Kate and I had to snowshoe two miles just to get to the trail head. We were the only ones out, and will all this snow we really couldn’t see the trail, so we were following a lone ski track up the valley.

We’re still on the road headed towards the trail head. Here, I’m looking at Mt. Quandary from the “other” side.

Rounding the bend and seeing the gulch was a gorgeous sight not captured well by our tiny camera balancing on hiking poles.

There’s a TON of old mine scattered around these mountains. There’s one located just on the other side of the valley that I’m itching to get a closer look at one of these days. More on that later.

Once we reached the trail head and were off the road it became a little more difficult to determine what was trial and what wasn’t. After crossing a snow covered stream we came across a little mining cabin. Super cool.

It seemed that there wasn’t anyone around, so I figured that it’s only occupied during the summer. There’s a bunch of stuff scattered around that I couldn’t quite place it’s use, but we did spot a pickup truck buried in the snow. The “trespassers will be shot on sight” did it’s job and we skirted around the cabin and headed further up the hill. We kept hearing weird noises, thinking there was an elk/bear/moose somewhere close by and the snow was getting pretty difficult to traverse, even with snowshoes, so sadly we didn’t make it to the end of the trail… so another hike goes back on our “try again” list.